Ideally, you
should be able to submit a wide variety of formats to your online
printer. It is of course in the nature of online printing to be more
inclusive and accepting since it caters to a wide variety of markets and
produces lots of different products. However, there will always be some
file formats and configurations that will cause you trouble in online
printing. In those situations and formats, it is sometimes actually best
to redo your prints to the more appropriate type.

If you do not
know exactly what are the right and wrong file formats/configurations in
online printing then you are in the right place. I will tell you here
all the formats and configurations that you should avoid. This should
help you veer away from the wrong formats and of course produce the
appropriate configurations all the time for online printing.

1.
Drafts in a web image format – A web image format is basically a file
format that is in low resolution, primed for fast loading in a web page
over the Internet. These formats were created to that people do not have
to wait a long time to see an image, especially with a slow connection.

The
problem with these formats is that they are rendered in low resolution.
While most newcomers think that the picture looks already good for
printing, once you do print these types of images the pixels and the
fuzziness will appear. That is why for online printing, such web formats
should not be used.

So while it is possible to use documents in
JPG, PNG and GIF format for online printing, it is a bad idea to do so.
Unless they are really big files with resolutions of more than 300DPI,
the best file format to print online is still the original document
format made from the desktop publishing application.

2.
Consumer file formats – Another file format that you should try to avoid
submitting to an online printer would be consumer file formats. These
are the formats made from typical commercial software and not
specialized printing applications. Examples of these include, word
document files from Microsoft Word or even the Open Document format from
OpenOffice.org. These more simple and unwieldy formats can sometimes
get skewed when they get converted to formal online printing, giving you
a different result each time. That is why it is best to avoid
submitting files like these for printing. 3.
Super-Proprietary formats – Of course, sometimes, applications also have
what we call the super proprietary formats. These are the document file
formats that only open in one software alone and cannot be opened by
other applications. While this can help ensure that the precise elements
in your document file is not lost, super proprietary formats limit your
choices of online printers to the ones that can actually open that
file. So if you want to be flexible with who you want to print with, it
is best to avoid super proprietary formats.

4. Documents out
of template specifications – Lastly, you should avoid submitting
document files to your online printer that are out of template
specifications. Believe me, if your prints are out of the template with
different settings and dimensions, there will always be a high chance
that they will be converted by the online printer. Unless you are really
printing purposefully out of those specifications, your prints will
always look a bit awkward if you submit a file format like this. So it
is best if you use templates when possible for online printing.Great!
Now you know what to avoid when it comes to submitting file documents
to your online printer. Make sure you remember these items all the time.